


All but a test

by ChameleonPrints



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-22
Updated: 2013-01-22
Packaged: 2017-11-26 12:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChameleonPrints/pseuds/ChameleonPrints
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ship and location: Destiel during Episode 7.17 when a newly-found Castiel has no memory but those of being Emmanuel the healer, this is the drive back to Sam’s hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All but a test

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize in advance for what is my first attempt at a fanfiction both in English and since many years. Please forgive (and correct if so you wish, I shall not take offense) my mistakes, I hope they are few.

After everything they had been through, Dean could not believe his eyes. The son of a bitch had found a way out. The perfect escape plan. Castiel was Emmanuel now and he seemed sincerely ignorant of his past. Their past.

Dean sighted, it was hard to take it all in at once. This man, this shell of an angel, had betrayed him and broken his brother, had ransacked the planet in a misguided attempt at God, all too intent on winning some heavenly war that didn’t concern the hunter. Even the sigh of Emmanuel should have pissed him off. But seeing him so naive, so small, so free… Castiel had what they all longed for somewhere, the possibility of a regular life. He even remained a little bad-ass with his healing powers. So Dean didn’t think of revenge and justice, he let out a breath for his saved friend and companion in arms. His first thought was of relief for all the pain Castiel had gotten to forget.  
Dean smirked at the idea of a God that would care enough to protect the angel. But very quickly something came back to nag at him, and while they drove and he kept his poker face, some knock on his mind’s door was getting insistent. Some unfairness, but not in judging Cas, in letting him down. It washed over him in a slow and liberated acknowledgment – after all it was safe to face his own perverted ideas, now that Cas pretty much no longer existed… Now, he couldn’t be close to him anymore. He’d lost a friend. Having him saved meant losing him, again. And having lost him meant he could see how much he’d cared, how much he’d expected from that disguised powerful celestial creature. How that meat-suit had become familiar, from a slight annoyance to a great addiction and pleasure. How terminal this road trip felt, carrying the Unknown Soldier to save the brother he had broken, a final journey together where he was the only one left in pain. “Hide it and tuck it away, Dean,” said the remnants of his daddy’s voice… And that demonic bitch on the backseat keeping him from staring at his angel, see what had really change, see how far he’d really gone.

In a perfect world Dean would have stopped the car to look at the man who had replaced his best friend. Take a good long last look to sear Emmanuel into his pupils without all the pain Castiel extruded in his memories. A happy miracle. In a perfect world, with the car parked by a petrol station off the highway he would have even dared to reach for the hand of the unknown man, felt Castiel under the cover of anonymity. Dean couldn’t even imagine a better world than the one where he would get to brush up for a few moments against that angel’s vessel’s skin, he wouldn’t have prayed for any other possibilities because he didn’t deserve them nor think them through.

Praying. Here’s a thing he could have never guessed he’d miss. He also knew he wouldn’t really stop, just like he hadn’t when he thought his friend was dead, he wasn’t going to just because the angel was comatose inside a human skin. He would keep praying for that feathery ass to come back to him. What else did he have to look forward to, really?

And he remembered all that he would have looked forward to if he had allowed himself. It crashed on him like waves in a storm, images of forbidden and illicit pleasures. All that he’d denied himself when he could have. The angel was easy to pervert, in a way. If he had known then what he knew now, what kind of ideas his mind carried in its mind’s pockets, he could have gotten the angel to reciprocate. Knowing that almost made him smile. Castiel’s lips floating over the road, something to look to through the windshield. Castiel’s kiss. His guts got tense and he was worried, now, what if this was a thing, something that was mended upside-down inside of him, what if he had turned… gay? But the gnawing feeling said otherwise, the little knocking inside only wanted Castiel and so did Dean. It probably wasn’t any apocalypse that had gotten his libido down, it was placing it on the wrong target. The goal had become Cas, more and more so that he’d forgotten about plays and chicks and empty flirts. They didn’t matter now that he had found something that did.

And that something was being taken away from him in front of his eyes. He didn’t care about the meat-suit. He had no attraction for Jimmy Novak, it was all Cas. So, the test was, did he feel something for that Emmanuel-guy? Did this healer really have his angel inside or had he been erased from all of time and creation? It was getting hard to drive but they were getting close now, close to save his brother, his brother who he had let slip from his thought in his selfish rambles on a theorized past attraction on Castiel. Dean would have slapped himself: fantasizing about the lips of the… thing responsible for the slow agonizing death-through-madness of his own brother, his most precious cargo through life? How dare he!

But Emmanuel chose this moment to look upon him with that quiet naiveté that was so close to his angel’s face that he pushed down on the brakes. Meg had dozed off. The side of the road was deserted. He needed to know that he’d let go for good, that he could have this man walk off with his best friend’s skin and just wish him a quiet life.

Emmanuel hadn’t reacted to the car stopping, he still looked at him with the curiosity of a puppy. It didn’t have the righteousness and grace of his angel, but it didn’t feel just like any man. The hunter took a big breath and stared back at the healer. He swallowed before holding out his hand. He wanted Castiel to be gone, to be at peace. He wanted the man not to understand him, to just walk away when this would be over, to think him crazy now. He wanted assurance that his friend was at rest. But really, that’s what he told himself so he could keep his hand steady on the way from the shaft to Emmanuel’s forearm. He would have never dared if this was the angel, his only safe way in was the impossibility of reciprocity: that the man would be a man, void of grace, void of that particular bond they’d shared. His one finger brushed up against the vessel’s wrist and he bit down on his lip to keep it together. Emmanuel shifted toward him slightly, palms facing upward, and Dean’s right hand came to perfectly rest inside that cupped left hand. The skin was the same as every incidental brushing he’d ever had with the angel, and that he could so easily recognize him scared Dean a little.  
He let go of the air he hadn’t realized he was holding in. Fingers fumbled and slotted into place, they were now holding hands and the man hadn’t said a word. The hunter dared to face him now, or so he thought until he met the blue gaze. But his protective mind kept pushing how he wasn’t at risk now, and this was possibly his last chance to look in those eyes. So he looked, and Emmanuel looked back. This wasn’t Cas, those eyes still looked cautious, uncertain, they didn’t know Dean, they hadn’t raised him from perdition. But it was like looking at a candle through a series of mirrors. Somewhere it flickered, far off through the fun house, something was there that he could recognize.

He couldn’t tell how long he’d been staring when Emmanuel tilted his head in such a striking resemblance that Dean gasped, letting out a painful hiss. The other man’s eyes widened. Meg stirred on the backseat but didn’t wake. One of them held the other’s hand stronger, but neither could have said which. They had leaned into each other, so close that the hunter could feel the warmth of the man’s breath. The whole world felt like it had been paused, and so it seemed very inconsequential, and Dean kissed the man on the corner of his lips, somewhere with enough skin as to be safe, safe from mind and realization, he thought, not conscious of the intense gaze they had been holding. But Emmanuel didn’t pull away, so Dean slipped just a few millimeters to the side, feeling the chapped skin and also the softness of the lower lip, its warmth, so different from anything he’d expected. They imperceptibly moved, Emmanuel almost a statue and Dean’s lips working their way as tiny ants along a thread of jam. But it soon was too much and he was relieved to hear Meg stirring again in the backseat. He seared his lips together and closed his eyes, his whole face snapping shut, holding the warmth of the vessel on his skin.

Emmanuel must have pulled away, for Meg’s grumpy remark was not conspicuous. “Are we there yet?” she mumbled as she shuffled her body back to sitting position. “Shouldn’t we be there yet?” She sounded so human. As to confirm this she stated “I’ve spent too much time in this meat-suit, it’s playing tricks on me.” He shrugged and turned on the impala, facing the road again. They were not thirty minutes away now. In the back Meg went on complaining about how boring he was to make a demon fall asleep. Sam would have had a smart question on demon’s dream or a quick trip back to hell, but he didn’t care anymore. He had the warmth of the angel’s lips on his, he had his brother’s side to get to, and he had the hope that a Castiel’s spark still lived inside of that naive human creature.

Now the question was: did he want that hope? Didn’t he want Castiel nicely stacked away and him safe from any sort of sin? A few more miles of road and a hospital surrounded by demons wasn’t going to give him much choice, but he didn’t know that yet. All he knew is that he had been kissed back, and if this was as close to a perfect world he would get, and that was scary as hell – he should know.

 

[The End!]


End file.
